Latta engaged the four-wheel drive and turned his pickup off the highway onto a rough two-track that would take them over the mountain. Joe asked if he could borrow his phone.
Latta was suspicious but handed it over. Joe punched it on and scrolled through the record of activity, and as he did Latta understood what was going on and moaned.
“What’s wrong, Dad?” Emily asked.
“Nothing,” Latta said, quickly resuming his game face.
Latta had been called by Critchfield six times the previous night — from nine p.m. until two a.m. — and four times that morning. In turn, Latta had called both Critchfield and Smith three times, and Sheriff Mead twice. Joe checked the time stamps of the activity. He was relieved Latta hadn’t contacted any of them after finding Joe at the Black Forest Inn.
Joe removed the battery from the phone, pocketed it, and handed the phone back to Latta. They both knew what it meant, Joe thought. Critchfield and Smith — or more likely the sheriff — couldn’t track them using the internal GPS in the phone. And Joe couldn’t trust Latta enough to run the risk of Latta placing a call.
Joe reached down and turned the power off on Latta’s radio, then unscrewed the connection to the mic and let the cord dangle. No doubt if either of them tried to call dispatch, Sheriff Mead or one of his people would overhear.
“We need to go dark for a while,” Joe said. “Jim, do you have any other phones or radios on you?”
“No phones, but there’s a couple of handhelds in the gear box in back.”
Joe nodded. He’d deal with them later. Then he thought of something else. The agency had recently equipped all game warden vehicles with a GPS tracking device mounted out of view under the driver’s-side seat. The idea was if a warden was taken by gunpoint and forced to drive — or the truck itself was stolen — dispatch could locate the vehicle.
“Excuse me,” Joe said to Emily, while he bent over her lap. He reached under the seat and jerked out the wires to the GPS unit.
“Never even thought of that,” Latta said. “And there you go damaging state equipment again.”
“My specialty,” Joe said.
Joe tried to keep his promise not to let Emily know too much. She was very smart. Fortunately, she was distracted by Daisy, who was making cow eyes at her.
“So you haven’t told them,” Joe said to Latta.
“Didn’t get a chance.”
“Did they know where you were going?”
“Not necessarily. I think we were all covering the same ground, and the inn would obviously be on the list.”
“Finally, a lucky break,” Joe sighed.
Emily asked, “What are you two talking about?”
“Just business stuff, nothing important,” Latta told her. Then to Joe: “Where did you get the ATV?”
“Bought it.”
“I’m surprised we didn’t know about it. Usually, there isn’t a transaction done in this county without them knowing about it.”
“The dealer isn’t on your team.”
“Ah,” Latta said with a nod. “Kelli Ann Fahey. She can be stubborn.”
“I’d call it honest,” Joe said.
Latta shrugged.
“Have they located my pickup?” Joe asked.
“Not that I know of. But they wouldn’t necessarily tell me right away. I’m not exactly at the top of the food chain. But I’m surprised you drove it away.”
As far as Latta knew, Joe thought, the bomb was still under Joe’s pickup and ready to be triggered.
“I hope nobody does anything stupid,” Joe said.
Latta grinned bitterly and shook his head. “That’s their specialty.”
Joe asked, “Does this place we’re going have cell service?”
“Probably not.”
“Does it have a landline?”
“I think so — assuming the owner pays the telephone bill when he’s not here. He seems like the kind of guy who would.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Latta’s pickup ground up the road through the heavy trees.
Emily said to Joe, “I thought at first you two were going to fight or something. I’m glad you’re friends, because I really like Daisy.”
Joe and Latta exchanged glances.
“She likes you, too,” Joe said to Emily. “She’s used to being surrounded by girls.”
Latta said, “This ain’t going to work forever, Joe. Those guys track everything that goes on in this county. It won’t be long before they figure this thing out.”
“Figure what thing out?” Emily asked.
“I told you, honey,” Latta said, with an edge in his voice, “it’s just business.”
Joe said, “We’ve just gotta hope the cavalry arrives in time.”
An hour and a half later, they found the cabin. It was a two-story log structure with a green steel roof and an impressive rock chimney. The cabin was located on the far end of a small meadow that had drifted over in the wind and snow. A few of the drifts were three feet tall. Latta’s pickup began to lurch from drift to drift, and Emily looked up in alarm.
“Dad, are we gonna get stuck?”
Joe wondered the same thing, although Latta was an experienced four-wheeler.
“Nope,” the game warden said, hitting his brakes on a small patch of dry ground between drifts. “This is as far as we go. We’ll have to hike the rest of the way in.”
Joe inadvertently glanced down at Emily, and felt ashamed for doing so.
“I’ll carry Em if you’ll bring her chair from the back,” Latta said.
“Deal.”
“Let’s hope the owner didn’t change the place he keeps the keys.”
He hadn’t.
The old-fashioned rotary-dial telephone inside the cabin had a dial tone.
While Jim Latta set about starting a fire in the fireplace and Emily murmured her love to Daisy, Joe checked in with Chuck Coon and Marybeth and gave them his new callback number.
Coon said the skies were clearing over Cheyenne and the snowplows were out on the highways. His strike team was assembling and would be ready to go within hours, provided the roads were reopened.
Marybeth said the Internet was out at the library — likely storm-related — and that she’d made no more progress finding an online profile of Erik Young.
As the fire crackled to life, Latta announced with foreboding that the electricity to the cabin was out, probably the result of wires that had been taken down by snow-laden tree branches somewhere in the forest. Joe and Latta combed the cabin for kerosene lamps and fuel, and found both.
By midafternoon, it was warm enough inside that Emily removed her coat.
Joe and Latta sat facing each other at the kitchen table.
After twenty minutes of painful silence, Latta looked at the front window as if he expected to see armed figures approaching.
“This won’t end well,” Latta said softly so Emily wouldn’t overhear.
25
Nate arrived at the Sand Creek Ranch lodge for dinner and walked through the parking lot with a bad attitude and Joe Pickett’s 12-gauge shotgun shell in his pocket.
The snowfall had lost its intensity at dusk but continued to sift down through the sky and trees like flour. There were small openings in the cloud cover where the stars shone through, but the moon was still obscured and there was little ambient starlight, which made the lodge look as if it were blazing from every pore.
There were rows of vehicles in the lot and Nate could see the silhouettes of people milling about through the ground-floor windows. He remembered what Liv had told him about weapons, so he skirted the lot and stashed his .500 and shoulder holster at the base of a thick caragana bush on the side of an outbuilding.